10 Nerd Dreams That Will Never Come True

10) Star Wars Post-Quels (Episodes 7/8/9)

This has long been a big dream for nerds, even if the prospect has faded considerably as of late: a new trilogy of films that would pick up where Return of the Jedi left off: the Empire has fallen, the New Republic has risen from the ashes, and Luke is about to restore the Jedi Order. The exciting thing about actual sequels (as opposed to the prequels) is that we wouldn't already know what happens (unless they used the many post-original trilogy books as inspiration, which they probably wouldn't). The reasons this dream is dead are:

No one wants to see George Lucas create three more mildly underwhelming (I'm trying to keep it civil, okay?) Star Wars entries.

George Lucas did not like the reception the prequels got, and has been quoted as saying he was done making Star Wars movies because he didn't want to go through that again.

George Lucas is not going to let anyone but him create canonical, live action films. For a while, it looked like Spielberg might direct one of the prequels - George squashed the idea quickly, refusing to let one of the best directors of our generation and his good friend even touch the series.

So maybe it's a blessing in disguise: we don't have to watch the internet get crazily worked up over new Star Wars films that would never live up to expectations no matter how good they were and we can always let "what happens next?" live in our imagination, which is probably better than whatever the reality would be. Plus, can you imagine Harrison Ford as a cranky, elderly Han Solo? I don't think anyone wants to see that. Then again, Mark Hamill could probably use the work.

UPDATE: We were wrong. We were so wrong.

9) Pokemon MMO

The Pokemon series seems like the ideal candidate for an MMO: it's about an innately social world where various trainers battle each other and trade. The games themselves are practically MMO's already, just without anything that would actually make it an MMO. Plus, the Pokemon games are enormously popular - an MMO would be an excuse for Nintendo to print money, between game sales and monthly fees.

The problem here? Nintendo. Nintendo's always been skittish about online play for their games, because they have an absolute iron grip over their brand image. Once you unleash something like a Pokemon MMO on the masses, it'll be only a matter of seconds before there are racial slurs and other various expletives been thrown around by strangers in the PokeWorld. Pokemon is family-friendly (at least, as "family-friendly" as a game about monsters brutalizing each other for the delight of children can be) - and Nintendo aims to keep it that way.

Nintendo publicly has been insistent that the reason for the lack of a Pokemon MMO is that they prefer all the socializing to be done in real life - bringing it to an online arena would pretty much kill that aspect. That's why Nintendo has used the "friend codes" for their online ventures - to ensure you never interact with anyone you don't know. So don't expect to hear any swear words in Pokemon anytime soon (minus Professor Oak calling his grandson "ASS" or whatever inventive expletive you named him).

8) Peter Molyneux To Live Up To The Expectations He Sets

"It's gonna be the best game ever." - Peter Molyneux, on Fable"There's some mechanics in there that just didn't work. There's some other mechanics that are brilliant that are never shown off properly. The story wasn't told with any great skill." - Peter Molyneux, on Fable"Players will be able to adjust the volume from 1 to 100 in increments of 1. You could play the game 100 times and have an entirely different experience." - Peter Molyneux, on Fable II"Fable II's story was rubbish." - Peter Molyneux, on Fable II

The least credible source for upcoming games by Peter Molyneux is very clearly none other than Peter Molyneux. He tends to promise worlds where anything is possible, everything can change, everyone will have a totally unique and exciting experience, and....well, it never quite pans out that way, and he tries to explain it away by saying whatever his last game was sucked but the new one will live up to all of the promises! It's become a predictable cycle, but dang if it's hard not to fall for it every single time. It's too bad though, because the games that Peter Molyneux describes are incredible, deep, life-altering games.

If we want to fool ourselves, there may be hope: Molyneux recently left Lionhead and Microsoft (where he overhyped Black & White and the Fable series) to strike out on his own again. He's been careful in recent years to try to not overhype things, he did have this to say:

"Although I'm not going to talk about the idea, I will say there are so many ingredients that go to make up an amazing game now, and those ingredients just didn't exist even a few months ago."

There it is. Is he saying the reason the old games weren't amazing was because the ingredients simply didn't exist? Regardless, they exist now. Destroy our expectations once again, Pete.

7) The Complete Dr. Who

Nerds tend to be completionists - it's why George Lucas has been able to re-release the same Star Wars movies on DVD about 20 times, it's why people go crazy to get every achievement/trophy in videogames, and it's why they like to own everything associated with something they like. Nerds love Dr. Who, and rightfully so - it's a sci-fi institution, and there's really nothing else like it in entertainment. The issue here is that the BBC accidentally erased huge libraries of old episodes, thinking they were essentially worthless. Over 100 episodes from the 60's (1st and 2nd Doctor eras) are lost forever.

The only hope to get any of them back? Find random people or stations who may have tapes of the episodes. Except this was a time before VCR's, so the odds of anyone taping them were slim-to-nil. A few episodes seem to re-surface every year, but it's a very slight trickle at this point, and there are whole serials where not a single episode has been found intact, and probably never will be. And not to stoke any fires, but I heard there's one from the 60's that shows the entire Time War in vivid detail.

6) For Nathan Fillion To Become A Huge Star

It's time to face reality - Nathan Fillion will only ever be beloved and well-known amongst moms (for Castle) and nerds (for everything else). Joss Whedon sure as hell tried - casting him as the lead in Firefly, putting him in Buffy once Firefly got cancelled, giving him Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, etc. But the crossover appeal of a more self-aware Harrison Ford was never meant to be. He's too old to get anything blockbustery that would expose him to the rest of the world (fans tried to get him cast as Green Lantern - but given how badly that turned out, maybe it was a blessing in disguise he didn't get it).

So instead of this generation's Harrison Ford, he's stuck being this generation's Bruce Campbell (which, all things considered, isn't a bad gig).